For Both Comfort and Company
by Holdur
Summary: After the events in Georgia, JJ tries to be a dog person again.


**For Both Comfort and Company**

Spoilers: The Big Game/Revelations

-

JJ used to be a dog person. She grew up with a scruffy little mutt named Booster who liked to dig up her mother's rosebushes. He would run at her heels as she ran the soccer ball up and down the lawn and when she kicked the ball into the bushes he went in after it and she had to rescue both the ball and the dog. JJ grew up loving dogs. (Her therapist calls it a trigger. JJ calls it hell on Earth.)

When Morgan calls one morning and asks for a ride to work, JJ doesn't think twice before agreeing. Morgan's on her way and someone stole his bike. She does remember that Morgan has a dog, but it's a fleeting thought that last time she was over, Clooney showed her how he learned to play dead. The memory of it doesn't faze her. JJ loves dogs.

Clooney doesn't bark or growl. He sits at Morgan's side when he opens the door, panting slightly in the excitement of meeting new people. It throws her immediately and violently back to the dark barn and the smell of wood and blood clogging her throat and three dogs on all sides and the panic of _oh god, I'm going to die_.

She's stuck in the growling and the dark and the way her feet slip and her hands shake until she hears Morgan's voice cutting across it all, carefully low and calm saying _JJ, look at me_.

She does and the barn falls away. Morgan has his hands up and she realizes that she has her hand on her gun. Clooney is lying behind Morgan, trying to press himself into the floor like he would gladly disappear into it, if he thought it would help. She drops her hand to her side and flees out into the free air and locks herself into her car, where she struggles for control over her heart and lungs.

Morgan appears five minutes later, tapping softly on the window to let her know. He's quiet all the way to the BAU and by the time they arrive JJ is a little bit calm again.

She makes a beeline for her office and buries her head in the waiting files, grateful to them for once because it's a constant reminder that someone has it worse than her.

She doesn't see Morgan again until he is heading home for the night. He comes to her office to check in, leaning against the doorjamb.

"Okay?" he asks. She's about to say _yes, fine_, but she can't quite bring herself to get the words out. She's thinking about how Booster used to like to sit at her feet with one paw on her sneakers.

"I used to love dogs," she says and feels like crying. Morgan stuffs his fists into his pockets and hunches his shoulders: a dog owner thinking about life without one.

"Do you want to come over for dinner?" he asks, "Nothing fancy, but it's hard to make bad spaghetti."

It sounds like a bad idea to JJ, but her plans for the evening—spending it alone with too much wine and not enough food—sound worse.

She drives them to Morgan's apartment and he asks for a head start and her gun. She hands it over, cheeks flaming red, and spends five minutes with her fingers drumming a nervous patter on the steering wheel.

There's a note stuck to the door. _Don't knock, just come in_. She pulls it off, crumples it in her hand. The hall is empty, but brightly lit. JJ thinks that Morgan might have every single light on. At the sound of the door closing, she hears a scuffle like paws slipping on wood floor. Her hand reaches back for the doorknob ready to flee, but then she hears Morgan's sharp _NO_. The scuffle stops and Clooney remains unseen.

"Make yourself comfortable," Morgan calls, "Dinner in ten."

She folds herself into the corner of the couch furthest from the kitchen. When Morgan brings out two plates of spaghetti, she sniffs at the sauce heaped on top and teases that it's probably been sitting in his kitchen for a month. He laughs and tells her next time she's cooking. He puts the TV on in the background, low enough to allow talking, high enough to obscure the dog noises coming from the kitchen.

Clooney spends the night on the edge of the kitchen, his wet nose peeking out from the partition. JJ tells herself she's doing fine. It helps that she gets drunk and Morgan drives her home.

-

Two weeks later, Morgan injures his knee tackling an unsub and JJ's the one on call when he's released from the hospital. When she parks the car at his house, Morgan says "Maybe you should call Prentiss or Garcia." JJ ignores him, hurrying around the car to help him manage two crutches and a car door.

"No way," she says, "I'll be fine." He gives her an appraising look, then slides awkwardly out of the car, hopping on one foot.

"Alright, but let me go in first. Clooney is usually pretty excited when I come home after a trip."

"Pretty excited" is an understatement. Morgan turns the key in the lock and JJ hears a mad scramble start in the back of the apartment that doesn't sound like it has enough time to stop before it hits the door. She catches a flash of gold fur that is moving too fast to resemble a dog and as the door closes Morgan says "Clooney!" in a high, excited voice that she has never in three years heard him use.

JJ follows after an acceptable amount of silence has passed. She slips into the kitchen, fills a bag with ice and throws it in the general direction of the couch without looking. The indignant "A little warning next time!" tells her she hit her target. She risks a look. Morgan is stretched on the couch with his knee up and covered in ice, flicking through channels. Clooney is thumping his tail on the floor and getting in the way, trying to push his head into Morgan's side. JJ gulps against the sudden dryness in her mouth and quickly turns away. Her hands feel cold, so she runs them under hot water at the sink.

It's her turn to cook. She doesn't need to open every drawer and every cupboard, but she does anyway. She already knows that she will be heating ham and peas and that they are in the freezer.

When she has two plates full of food, she turns to take them into the living room and gets stuck at the edge of the kitchen. Clooney's in the way. He hasn't moved from his spot beside the couch, but JJ can't sit down without getting too close. Clooney lifts his head from where he's trying to sniff at Morgan's elbow and looks at her. JJ takes an involuntary step back.

"JJ, okay?" Morgan asks.

"Yeah," she says. Her heart may be trying to pound it's way out of her chest, but she hasn't pulled her gun on a teammate, which means she's doing great. Morgan knows a lie when he hears one.

"Tell him to go to bed," he says, "He's going to walk past you and into the bedroom. Can you do that?" She nods.

"Clooney," she says. He's up on his feet before she finishes and her voice breaks on the last sound. She clutches at the plates, holding herself steady. "Clooney, bed."

He trots past her, disappearing into the hall. A second later she hears him flop to the ground. JJ's mouth falls open in surprise. In the barn, there had only been time for one frantic _Sit!_ before the crack of gunfire. Since then, she had forgotten what it a trained dog was like.

"JJ?" Morgan asks.

"I'm fine," she says. This time it isn't a lie.

-

JJ and Morgan trade dinners and Clooney learns not to rush the door and to keep his distance. There are some things Clooney learns that JJ doesn't think Morgan taught him. When Morgan and Clooney take turns chasing each other through the house, Clooney will only play if he knows JJ is not in the way. If she is, he flops to the ground and won't budge.

It's not a straightforward, ever improving progression. There are days when JJ can't look at him without freezing and some days when she forgets about the dogs in the barn. Sometimes Clooney knows and hides himself away somewhere inconspicuous and sometimes Morgan needs to remind him to keep all four paws on the floor.

Slowly and surely, the distance between JJ and Clooney dwindles until JJ is sitting in one corner of the couch and Clooney is curled into a tight ball in the other. JJ has her knees up to her chin, flipping through channels while Morgan tries to cook. Clooney lifts his head to shake out his ears, then sets it back down on his paws with a long, tired huff of breath. When he falls asleep, he uncurls and his head gets squashed in the crack between couch cushions. She's happy watching him twitch in his sleep, close enough to reach out and touch, if she wanted to.

JJ thinks she might like dogs again.

-

JJ doesn't like dogs again and all it takes is meeting one strange dog to figure it out.

She's walking back to the SUVs with Morgan after chasing an UNSUB through a local park when suddenly a dog runs through the grass and out in front of them. It's medium sized, brown and white. It stops a few feet away and begins to bark.

JJ loses the ability to walk. She can't seem to hear, but she can see everything in perfect detail. The colors are over bright and the lines too sharp, except for the dark, fuzzy areas where a barn is trying to creep in. Her hands are numb.

Morgan slides in front of her with one smooth step as a man follows the dog at a run with an empty leash in hand.

"Hey man, control your dog," Morgan says. The man takes one look at Morgan, clips the dog into the leash and disappears. JJ doesn't see him go because she's busy looking at her feet and wondering why they won't work.

Morgan puts one hand on her shoulder and flips open his phone with the other. She feels a slight pressure and stumbles into motion. His one sided conversation is a buzz in her ears, then he's hovering while she scrambles into the car. It's a short ride and JJ doesn't remember most of it, only the way the buildings slide by like liquid and that every so often Morgan lets his rage out on the steering wheel.

When she can hear again (like being slammed back into her body—suddenly the buzz becomes sound, the colors dim, her hands start to tingle) she's sitting on Morgan's couch. He's in the kitchen on the phone, angry. She hears a thump like a hand connecting with a cupboard, then he says "No, I'm fine. She's fine. Tell Reid she'll be fine." Clooney is sitting at her side at a distance. When she looks at him he lets out a whine and inches closer.

She turns her hands palm up on her legs. It's a gesture she thought she had forgotten, the one she used to tell Booster it was okay to get close and curl up in her lap. Clooney wiggles forward and rests his chin on her knee.

She reaches one hand out to skim her fingers over his ear. His fur is soft and silky. His ears are big enough to hang by his neck and JJ remembers the children's song she used to sing to Booster. _Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro?_ She runs her fingers down his neck, scratching at his chest. He keeps his head still on her knee and doesn't seem to mind that her hand trembles slightly.

Maybe JJ doesn't love dogs anymore, but she loves Clooney.


End file.
